Traditions and Filipino comfort foods

For Mother's Day this year, I made the same request that I do every year -- that my kids come with me to church. On Sunday, they went above and beyond and even made me Filipino breakfast -- longsilog, which is a plate of LONGganisa (Filipino sausage), SInangag (garlic fried rice) and itLOG (fried egg). And of course, tropical mimosas. SO GOOD. My children know me well :)

I spent the rest of the day relaxing at the house with John and watched a Netflix series that both my daughters have been recommending, 13 Reasons Why. We were so absorbed by the show that we almost forgot to eat dinner! Thankfully, I remembered that I'd made a tray of biko (Filipino rice cake) earlier that day, topped it off with a scoop of ube ice cream and John's new favorite dessert was born. I'm telling you, the way to my heart has always been great food -- and I'm pretty sure that's true for the rest of my family.

How about you? What are you favorite ways to celebrate and make someone feel special?

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One Last Thing...

FROM MICHELLE'S KITCHEN: BIKO (FILIPINO RICE CAKE)

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups sweet rice
  • 1 can langka (jackfruit), undrained
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 can coconut milk

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cook the rice (I use a rice cooker) using a mixture of water and all the liquid from the can of langka.* Place the langka on top of the rice as it cooks.
  3. As the rice cooks, heat the can of coconut milk over low heat and whisk in the brown sugar until it's fully dissolved and the mixture is nice and goopy.
  4. Once the rice is cooked, transfer to a 9x13 rectangular casserole dish. (Another option is to bake it in an extra-large muffin pan like this for individual portions.) Flatten the rice until it's level and pour the coconut milk/brown sugar mixture over the top.
  5. Bake in the oven until you see it bubble.

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*To figure out how much water to add to the rice, I use the standard Filipino finger-measurement. If you have no idea what this means, ask me the next time you see me :)